On his Wednesday show, Adam Carolla interviewed Andrew Breitbart to discuss Andrew’s new book, Righteous Indignation. Let me assure you, you’ll LOVE this duo. Andrew’s been a guest on Carolla’s show before, but this was hands down the most entertaining so far.

Check out some of the comments from Carolla’s regular listeners – not surprisingly, some aren’t exactly Breitbart fans (which makes it that much more enjoyable for me, at least).

Carolla tackled topics with Andrew on just about everything – from Righteous Indignation to Communism, the Left’s Racist meme, the racket of building permits and greenwashing, and unions, just to name a few. And a whole lotta LA, which, as Andrew illustrates for us, ain’t what is used to be. The two were on such a rant roll over our waning freedoms, Carolla, who has described himself as having libertarian leanings, almost sounded like another grassroots activist. Who knows? Sounds like he may just have a bit of Presidential appeal. Andrew certainly thought so!

“By the way, are you aware that the Republican Party has nobody running for the presidency right now, and if you had put that out there by mistake and people heard that, and that was your spiel, you would have gone up to Donald Trump level, you would have gone up to 17%?”

Oh yeah – Carolla’s also not a big fan of Maxine Waters. Not. At. All. Which reminds me, this audio is NSFW.

If you’re familiar with the political concept of The Overton Window (no, not the Glenn Beck thriller), you’ll also enjoy the duo’s discussion about how smokers have unwittingly allowed themselves over time to be regulated almost out of existence. Carolla makes creative use of both the war on smokers and the NRA to make that analogy, in a rather unforgettable way. Listen as he sets up what has happened over the years and how we’ve gotten where we are today.

It’s funny that you used the smoking thing. I think about that all the time and I always use it as an example of the difference between the guys who wanted to smoke and the NRA… I secretly suspect this is what the NRA does, not a fan, but this is what they do, this is part of their strategy…see…

So, somebody came into the restaurant and said ‘Hey smokers, you know what, we’re gonna need to move you on over here and just create a little smoking section on this side of the restaurant, so would you just pick it up and move it over here please?’ And everyone went ‘oh yeah, OK,’ and they went and sat in the smoking section. And then at a certain point, somebody came up and said ‘Hey, uh, smokers listen, uh, gonna need you to clear out of the dining area but if you wanna smoke at the bar that’d be fine‘, and they just sort of got up and went ‘yeak, OK, alright’ and then went and sat at the bar. And then the same guy came back again and said, ‘bad news, gonna need to move you out front, outside, can’t have any smoking in the bar or the restaurant, just go out front’ so they went ‘yeah, OK,’ so they stood out on the sidewalk in front of the valet and smoked a cigarette. And then the guy came out and said ‘gonna need you to move down the street 80 paces to smoke a cigarette’ and you see, they just kept getting up and moving.

What the NRA does is they say, ‘f*** you, we’re not moving, let’s argue about it,’ and they’re staying where they are. Meaning, they said, ‘hey man, we need those hollow tip bullets’ and went ‘I don’t think so,’ and now they just argue about it. Now, I don’t think they’re really arguing about that. They just don’t wanna keep sliding out down the sidewalk with the smokers.

And this is the way we are, especially in CA. Which is, we go, ‘hey do this,’ and then someone goes ‘alright.’ Or, we’ll go ‘hey put a tax on cigarettes for a dollar,’ and then next time they go ‘hey make it another buck’ and then they go, ‘eh make it 5 bucks!’ And then Rob Reiner goes, ‘it should be 10 bucks!’ And then all the people that don’t smoke and are full of f***ing righteous indignation, they go ‘oh yeah!’ And then someone says ‘give it to the kids’ and then, next thing you know, we’re where we’re at.

All in all, Carolla seemed quite inspired by Andrew’s plight (and that of Righteous Indignation). Political correctness has run amok, regulations are overbearing, and our freedoms are dissipating before our eyes. How much longer are people going to just sit back and take it all? While there are so many memorable…and colorful quotes in this interview, perhaps this one from Carolla bluntly states the sentiment best:

“What we all need to do in life is just start standing up and telling people to f*** off.”

I suspect many of the Bigs readers might agree. Hell, I certainly do.

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You see, this is how it works — at least how it works in my home state of Wisconsin:

1. Public Sector Unions give upwards of 90% of their political donations to help get Democrats elected.

2. With the help of all this public union money, Democrats get elected to local and state offices.

3. Guess who the Public Sector Unions then collective bargain with? That’s right, the very same people who they helped get elected. And guess what the elected Democrats give away in order to keep that union money coming into their campaign coffers? Taxpayer money! You want to retire at 55 with full pension and benefits? No problem. We’ll just raise the money by increasing the tax burden on the working class. Sure, that means private sector workers will have to work till their 70 due to the tax burden necessary to cover public worker pensions, but sometimes the “social justice” omelette requires a few broken eggs. 

4. And yet somehow, with all these “rights” and a salary and benefit package worth around $100k a year for nine months work, Milwaukee Public School teachers still manage to not educate their students.

Yeah, that’s what King gave his life for.

Public Union collective bargaining is about as corrupt a racket as there is, and if I thought AFTRA was capable of shame I’d suggest they be ashamed of themselves. It’s also worth noting that April 4th — the date we’re all supposed to stand together in solidarity for those who enjoy benefits the rest of us paying for them only dream of –  is a Monday, a workday (at least in the real world). Don’t these people ever speak truth to power on the weekends?  Or is that when they rest up after a long, hard week of taking it to the streets to fight on behalf of an aristocracy of public workers kept in place by the enforced government taxation of the working class?

Actually, the attendance was easily in the tens of thousands, but sometimes it’s fun to take a cue from the MSM and just understate any fact that doesn’t serve your narrative.

Still, despite the impressive numbers, the predominately white rally does differ from Glenn Beck’s recent Restore Honor rally, and the Tea Party movement in general, in one way that illuminates the core difference between left and right.

Specifically, the Tea Party tends to be a movement of individuals, each pursuing their own interests, self-organizing in defense of their own rights, whereas the One Nation Working Together rally was the product of partnerships between over 400 labor, civil-rights, and other liberal organizations, many of whom bussed in their members by the thousands to bolster their numbers.

If there is any better picture of the top-down, coercive nature of liberalism than their approach to “grass roots” organizing, I’m not sure what it is.

These organizations use intimidation and the power of law to demand workers join their ranks in order to be employed in their sectors, then confiscate money from them in the form of mandatory dues, and then use that money to promote political causes that represent the interests of the organizations themselves – not necessarily their members.

Then they encourage those members to get on the busses their dues already paid for and go spend their weekend marching around to demand that politicians give the organizations even more power over them.

For actors plying their trade in Hollywood, it is an oft-recited axiom that in order to get work, you must be union, but in order to be union, you must get work.

Being a union actor, and therefore employable in Hollywood, means belonging to either the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or their sometimes-sister/sometimes-bitter-rival union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).

Either way, your union dues and infrastructure are being used to support One Nation Working Together – regardless of whether you personally support liberal policies or not.

Both unions sent out official emails to their members encouraging them to participate in the activities in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles this weekend.

SAG says that it supports One Nation Working Together, and that it will be marching in solidarity with its fellows.

AFTRA is an official Endorsing Organization, along with groups like Communist Party USA, MOVE ON, National Council of La Raza (National Council of The Race, for those who don’t understand bi-lingual racism), Code Pink, Rainbow Push, and the International Socialist Organization.

If you belong to SAG or AFTRA and yet happen to be one those racist, mean-spirited, divisive Tea Partiers, or are just generally opposed to bolstering the politics of race-baiters, international communists, or anti-war activists, you certainly don’t have to march in the protest, but you’re still obliged to finance your union’s promotion of it.

* For the record, AFTRA says general member dues were not used to support One Nation Working Together, but that some AFTRA Locals may help to pay for buses.  This misses the point, however, that the entire organizational structure that allows AFTRA to promote these sorts of events is the product of member dues.

Of course, you are always perfectly free to just leave the union if you disagree with its political affiliations.  The fact that might mean effectively quitting your profession and giving up your livelihood makes this exactly the kind of freedom the left loves to support.

This is just one more reason it is so difficult for conservatives in Hollywood.  When you are required to financially support liberal political organizations as a prerequisite for employment in a business where being rejected for a job without explanation is necessarily a daily occurrence, it is hard to believe your conformity to the party line is not itself a requirement.

Iraq War vets who complain of discrimination and recrimination by casting directors seem a bit more credible when their own union declares solidarity with Code Pink, and Republicans afraid to voice their beliefs on set for fear of being blacklisted seem less hyperbolic when their own union declares solidarity with LA Grassroots for Obama, SEIU, and the Democratic Socialists of America.  At the same time, writers bemoaning the witch-hunts of McCarthyism in screenplay after screenplay seem somehow less credible when both major acting unions declare solidarity with the Communist Party USA.

In matters of racial or sexual discrimination, the left is quick to point out that discrimination is not just about reality, it is about perception.  A person can be coerced into conformity by just the appearance of consequences for going their own way, even if no explicit threat is made.  So consider for yourself whether the two emails below lend credibility to the fears of conservatives in Hollywood, and ask yourself how you might feel if you were in their shoes.

SAG EMAIL:

AFTRA EMAIL:

An international group of actors’ unions, including SAG, has warned members not to work on “The Hobbit” because of failed efforts to organize the film’s New Zealand production — a move Peter Jackson disparages as a “power grab.”

Members were advised [1] in an alert sent over the weekend “not to accept work on this non-union production” of the MGM blockbuster-to-be, which is still awaiting the official greenlight from financially troubled MGM before shooting — tentatively scheduled for next year — can begin.

Guilds involved include SAG, AFTRA and several international unions. The New Zealand unit of an Australian union had made attempts to organize the film, according to the alert.

But Jackson fired back in a statement Sunday, saying the Kiwi organization represents a very tiny percentage of actors there, and is leveraging his production to gain membership.

Actors guilds are known to issue member alerts of this sort from time to time, but it is extremely rare for a major studio franchise film to be involved.

Here’s the full text of the alert: 

The makers of feature film The Hobbit – to be shot in New Zealand next year – have refused to engage performers on union-negotiated agreements.

Members of Canadian Actors Equity, US Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild, UK Actors Equity, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (Australia) and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists are advised not to accept work on this non-union production.

If you are contacted to be engaged on The Hobbit please notify your union immediately.

Here’s the full text of Jackson’s statement:

Read full article here.

Fifty four years ago, I was elected first vice president of the New York local of the television actors union which came to be known as AFTRA. My fellow board members and I fought hard to convince members to merge with the Screen Actors Guild.  Double the size of the union, double the bargaining power! But some of the members resisted, afraid that the number of actors competing with them for jobs would multiply. (Virtually all work produced for television was live and did not involve film and therefore SAG. Why let all those west coast people in on a good thing!)

As time went by, things shifted, more and more shows began to be produced on film and SAG became dominant. Now, it was the film actors turn to fear competition. Why let that little TV union in on a good thing. There’s almost no live TV left, these guys are nothing but news-casters and talk show hosts.  Every attempt at merger has failed because a vocal frightened minority in first one union and then the other fought tooth and nail against it on the grounds that there would be more actors competing against them for jobs. These actors are, I think, insecure in their talent so, naturally, scared of competition.

Recently, something unforeseen happened. The technology of video- tape became so improved that it began to compete in quality with that of film. TV sitcoms and dramas could now be shot under the aegis of the smaller union, AFTRA. Because it was smaller and weaker, it had had to settle for less pay and fewer benefits for its members. There was lots of money to be saved by producers. They could hire the same actors under AFTRA for whom they would have had to pay more under SAG. 

Frightened little people, over the years, have scuttled chance after chance to have performers represented by one large, powerful union. Now any chance at merger is probably gone forever. When I was a kid, FDR on the radio said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. We should be afraid of fear, or at least of acting out of it. That always wreaks havoc and now we actors are paying for it.

It can’t be accidental. Certainly there must be one celebutard who has an opinion on the debate. I long for a wonderful bit of wisdom from Sheryl Crow, perhaps a suggestion to save costs and the environment by washing and re-using band-aids.

Where is Barbra Streisand? Barbra has been noticeably absent from all political debate lately. Probably not coincidentally, she just released a new album. Perhaps her handlers advised Babs to tone it down; that her target audience is  composed primarily of senior sitizens now, a demographic that has a tendency to skew conservative and worry greatly about their health care. (The profit motivation is an  awesome force, strong enough to restrain torrents of wisdom from the Great Barbra Streisand.)

Even Mike Farrell, a frequent advocate of government health care, has been silent lately. Mike is a fortunate celebrity, whose name would be unrecognizable to anybody, if Wayne Rogers hadn’t stormed off the set of M*A*S*H 35 years ago. Farrell is still making an incredible living based on those eight years of work he did more than a quarter century ago; he gets a little bit of change every time you watch a re-run of M*A*S*H.

He is one of those who believes in a “right” to healthcare. The flaw in his thinking is that health care does not exist without the labor of others, and you have no “right” to the labor of others. I wonder if Mike Farrell believes that access to free reruns of M*A*S*H is a basic human right?

For instance, the people who developed the Viagra which helps Mike Farrell enjoy his M*A*S*H residuals, spent many long hours in a laboratory developing that medicine. I would suggest they worked more hours than Mike spent in his location trailer while his show was being filmed. The creators of  medicine are just as entitled to residuals as the creators of television. 

Is it related to need? A critic might suggest that medicine should be free since people need medicine to live, whereas television is only a want. But to me, that is more reason why it should be paid for.  People don’t like to do things for free.

My Grandma used to give me five bucks every time I cut her lawn. I felt guilty, and tried to refuse it because after all she was my Grandma. “You did me a big favor,” she insisted, “At least let me buy you a little beer.” (She had to know I was only sixteen, right?) Eventually I relented.

What my Grandma understood quite well was that a task unpaid for stops getting done. Sure enough, I would be over her house every Saturday, picking up a little beer money by mowing her lawn. I was young and energetic back then, and I probably could have found many different ways to spend those Saturday afternoons. If it was just for the love of Grandma I might have put the mow off for a couple of days. But because I wanted a twelve-pack of Carling Black Label, I was pushing a lawnmower around her yard every single Saturday afternoon in the Summer.

It is the same with medicine. The only reason why we have wonderful things like botox, chemical peels, laparoscopic bariatric surgery, liposuction, collagen injections, implants, steroids, anti-virals, and the vast array of anti-depressants that keep actors young, slim, shiny, and smiling on the red carpet is because people in the medical industry wanted a little extra beer money on Saturday night. Maybe actors have figured this out, and oppose the President on this issue for that very reason.

A comic friend once suggested that the second amendment should be viewed in its historical context, that the right to bear arms should only apply to the right to own the high technology of the 18th Century: flintlocks, muskets and blunderbusses. I suggest that if the Constitution suggests that Americans have a right to health care, that it also be taken in historical context. You have the right to bleedings, leaches and arsenic therapy; and unlimited access to the barber of your choice. Surgery will be paid for, but anesthesia is extra. 

Still interested, Mike?

I’m a member of two performing arts unions. I pay dues to two organizations that actively support efforts to influence producers to hire fewer actors of my gender and race. They also spend millions of my dollars supporting candidates and issues which are anathema to me. Here’s the latest example: The first letter below was sent out to all AFTRA members urging them to send this form letter supporting Card Check to their representatives in Congress. They urged us to customize the letter so it wouldn’t look so “form,” so I did! I don’t think my letter is what they had in mind. I urge all SAG and AFTRA members who are readers here to do the same.

Original Union Version

I am writing to voice my support for the Employee Free Choice Act which has just been reintroduced in Congress. If you haven’t become a co-sponsor, I urge you to do so. And if you’re already a co-sponsor, I hope you’ll do everything you can to encourage your colleagues to get on board.

The economic tailspin has put the middle class, our country’s backbone, in peril. Rising health care costs, home foreclosures, stagnant wages, and shrinking retirement plans are all taking a huge toll.
To revive the economy and rebuild the middle class in the long term, we need to empower workers to negotiate for better wages and benefits.

The Employee Free Choice Act will do just that – allowing workers to form a union when a majority of them want one. It will also stiffen penalties on employers who harass, intimidate, and fire workers for their support of a union.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a critical piece of our economic recovery. I’m confident you’ll continue to represent the best interests of workers in your district by supporting it.

The Jeffrey Jena Version

I am writing to voice my contempt for the Employee Free Choice Act which has just been reintroduced in Congress. If you haven’t become a co-sponsor there is a chance I may vote for you, I urge to show your support for the secret ballot in America.

The economic tailspin has put the middle class, our country’s backbone, in peril. Empowering unions to run rough shod over small business will even further cripple our chances for recovery. Rising health care costs, home foreclosures, stagnant wages, and shrinking retirement plans are all the result of too much government in our lives. We don’t need Washington smashing its fist down on Middle America.

To revive the economy and rebuild the middle class in the long term, we need to empower business owners to fire up the engine of our system, small and medium size businesses.

The Employee Free Choice Act is Communism at its finest! We already have a system that allows workers to form a union when a majority of them want one. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!

The Employee Free Choice Act is almost as stupid as the bailouts you have already enacted. I’m confident you’ll continue to represent the best interests of workers in your district by voting against it!